Photo by Drew Barillas

The writer and The Sled

In our new column, First Person, L.A. writers tackle the good, the bad and the funny about life as they know it.

Three years ago, I became the proud owner of a 1988 Toyota Corolla with 240,000 miles on it, approximately 40 dents -- I stopped counting -- and a broken cassette player.

Times were tough. I had moved to California from Florida, and for a year my future bride and I shared a car. In Los Angeles, that's like trying to rub your belly, pat your head and masturbate at the same time. But writing assignments were hard to come by, so I took a waiter/bartender job at a fancy country club about the same time Sally started a new job on the opposite side of town. Sharing wheels no longer worked.

So we found the Corolla, for which we paid $800. The Manhattan Beach couple who sold it to us had been its only owners. They were probably thinking: suckers.

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Alissa Walker

When someone asks me if they have to rent a car when visiting L.A., I really, really, really, really want to say no. Of course you can experience L.A. without a car. I do it every day. But for me to explain all the quirks of navigating our transit-nascent city to a wide-eyed visitor, I'd pretty much have to strap them onto my back as I boarded the nearest rapid bus. Now, thankfully, I can simply hand them Nathan Landau's new book.

Where most travel books add a conciliatory line about taking transit in L.A., Landau's Car-Free Los Angeles and Southern California is a door-to-door guidebook to seeing L.A. without getting behind the wheel. From how to get from the airport (FlyAway!) to planning your route (Metro Trip Planner!) to riding the bus to the Getty (without parking, admission is free!) to getting to Disneyland by transit (it's possible!), the detailed transit directions for hundreds of Southern California destinations makes a car-less visit feel possible. And, dare I say, enjoyable.

But a revealing thing about Landau's book is that his tips and advice are almost more resonant for an L.A. resident who wants to give car-free living a shot. Landau actually proposes completely unique itineraries for experiencing Los Angeles, including a few that my transit-savvy self had not even considered. It makes the guide less like a travel book, and more like a handbook for local culture-seekers who'd like to climb out of their cars for a different kind of urban adventure. Here are some of the more compelling ideas I found in Landau's book that will work for anyone -- native or newbie -- who wants to immerse themselves in the other side of L.A.: The one without valet parking.

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Melodie Mousset

"Removing Boulders," from The Rock and Eagle shop

Everything's social this week -- jokes with friends spur a pop-up shop, a four-course meal becomes an exhibition and a group of artists tries to figure out why time can terrify.

5. Dinner-party graveyard
In late March, Jason Kraus invited 12 people to dinner. Everyone had to commit to come seven nights in a row and eat the exact same four-course meal. Each night, Kraus set a new, specially constructed wood table with identical but different china, glasses and silverware. After the final dinner, he cut up the tables and turned them into cabinets. All seven tables-turned-cabinets now hold the stained napkins and cleaned plates, cups and utensils. They're on view in "Dinner Repeated" at Redling Fine Art. It's like a shrine to a party you missed. All you can do is spot the anomalies -- the red wine stains on one shelf, the lipstick marks -- and guess at what happened. 6757 Santa Monica Blvd.; through May 12. (323) 230-7415, redlingfineart.com.

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A Honda Accord driven by James Duffy, 27, claimed the last parking spot in Westwood on Saturday afternoon, witnesses reported, a discovery that sent shockwaves through the neighborhood near UCLA.

Duffy drove up Westwood Boulevard and circled the neighborhood for more than 20 minutes before locating the space, which was next to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Gayley Avenue. He was parking to meet his friend Scott for pizza and maybe a movie afterwards, according to sources close to him.

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California Arts Council

You've likely noticed this sun setting behind an iconic row of palms as it darted in front of you on the 405. But unless you've got one of these specialty plates screwed on your own Prius, it's unlikely you knew that it supports the state's art funding. "I had lived in California my whole life, and I am an artist, and I had seen it everywhere," says Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, chair of the California Arts Council. "I had no clue it was an arts plate."

The potential of that plate was on Shriver's mind when she joined the California Arts Council's board and began to understand the deplorable state of California's arts funding. In 2000 the California Arts Council's budget was $32.2 million; by 2009 it had dropped to $5.4 million. Federal and state monies had dried up, yet a small but steady stream of donations continued to trickle in due to drivers choosing the plate. "Two-thirds of our budget was coming from a license plate that no one knew about," she says. "We were skating by on the fact that some people liked the image and picked it for the palm trees."

A new campaign spearheaded by Shriver called "Create a State" hopes to raise awareness about the connection between the plate and the arts -- enough awareness to get 1 million California drivers to switch to the new plate. If a million people put this plate on their car instead of the standard-issue California plate, says Shriver, it would funnel more than $40 million into the state's arts education funds, put the California Arts Council back on track financially, and dramatically ease the arts funding crisis currently facing the state's public schools.

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All photos by Amanda Lewis

Forget 140 characters: try eight!

In a city full of networking self-promoters and wannabe celebs, it's no surprise that ridiculous vanity license plates abound. That little space on the back of your car represents a precursor to the away message and the Facebook status, albeit a near-permanent one. These plates capture and make public the city's cheery self-regard, affixing tired boasts and jokes to the buttocks of the metallic shells required for any Angeleno traveling more than two blocks.

I developed an unhealthy obsession with vanity plates after moving to LA about two years ago. Here are the best of the best of the ones I've seen and managed to frantically photograph (always while stopped at traffic lights, Mom, I promise).

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Alissa Walker

Could this be L.A.'s transportation future?

Where once art originated from the front seat of a freewheeling Los Angeles vehicle -- Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip photography series, Dennis Hopper's Double Standard photograph of a gas station -- our kill-me-now traffic has forced local artists to step outside the car and start examining our transit problems instead.

"The future of automobile transportation is that there won't be drivers anymore," proclaimed Chris Burden to audible gasps and some giggles at the opening of Metropolis II, his giant kinetic sculpture now installed at LACMA. The 1,100 customized Hot Wheels cars whirring through a city of building-block skyscrapers is a scale model of Burden's vision for L.A.'s future: Cars that are swiftly autopiloted along pre-determined routes, moving ten times faster than they do today.

"It's a hopeful future," he offered. "Cars will have an average speed of 230 miles per hour as soon as Google gets all their cars up and running." Alluding to the company's recently patented driverless car program may have been surprising to the art critics in the room, but the transit nerds like me nodded in agreement. According to transportation theorists, autonomous automobiles may be the only hope for curing L.A.'s humiliating gridlock. Giddy chatter of bike lanes peppers our conversations, but Metropolis II might be the more realistic visualization of L.A.'s transit future.

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